The watch dealer's toolkit

Everything you need to trade watches for a living.

Free tools, verified compliance guides, and dealer paperwork — one reference desk for pricing every deal, knowing the rules in your city, and running the business right.

Try the calculator Browse the guides

13 free calculators · 120 dealer articles · 58 sourced compliance guides · 153 glossary terms · no signup

Max buy calculator

Work any deal back to the most you should pay — before you make the offer.

Open the calculator

Compliance checker

Answer a few questions and get a personalized federal, state, and city setup checklist.

Check your setup

Compliance guides

Licensing, sales tax, holding periods, and records — state by state, with sources.

Browse the guides

Dealer paperwork kit

Bills of sale, purchase receipts, invoices, and more, with your letterhead. Free PDF downloads.

Open the kit

Watch Trading Toolkit is a free reference desk for people who buy and sell watches: calculators that work a deal back to the most you can pay, compliance guides that cite the actual ordinance for your city, ready-to-send dealer paperwork, and 120 articles on buying, pricing, selling, and running the business. Published by the team behind WristBook.

Guides cite primary sources and carry a last-verified date
Transparent calculator math, covered by tests
No signup, no cookies — deals stay private to your browser
Fees are editable estimates you stay in control of

The calculator

Know your max buy in seconds.

Type your expected sale price. We work back through fees, prep, and tax to the most you should pay — before you make the offer.

Your number in seconds
Saved private to your browser
Export or print a buy sheet

The math is simple enough to check by hand: your maximum buy price is the expected sale price, minus selling fees and payment processing, minus shipping, insurance, and prep, minus the profit you want to make. Everything below that line is your ceiling.

How it works

Three steps to your number

Type the sale price

Enter what you expect to sell the watch for. That is the only number you need to start.

Tweak the simple stuff

Pick where you'll sell and how much profit you want. We fill in typical fees; change any of them.

Get your max buy

See the most you can pay and still hit your profit — plus your break-even, ready to save or print.

New to dealing? Start here

Are you ready to deal watches?

9 questions on what you know, how you price, the rules where you buy and the money you’ll tie up. Then where you stand, and what to do first — each step a guide or a tool.

Where do you expect to buy most of your watches?

9 questions, one at a time
Your result on the page, no sign-up
A plan for what to do first

Take the readiness check

Paperwork kit — free

Dealer paperwork, done in minutes

Six documents a working dealer actually needs. Fill in a short form, watch the page build itself, and download a clean PDF with your letterhead on it. What you type stays in your browser.

Your business name

Bill of Sale

No.: blank
Date: October 20, 2026

Seller

blank

Buyer

blank

The watch

Brand: blank
Model: blank
Reference: blank
Serial number: blank
Included: Watch only (no box or papers)

Price and payment

Purchase price: blank
Paid by: blank
Payment reference: blank

Terms

1.
Sale. The Seller sells and transfers to the Buyer, and the Buyer buys, the watch described above for the purchase price stated above.
2.
Ownership. The Seller states that they are the lawful owner of the watch, have the right to sell it, and know of no lien, claim, or other interest in it held by anyone else.
3.
Authenticity. The Seller states that the watch is genuine and that the identifying details above are accurate to the best of the Seller's knowledge.
4.
Condition. The watch is sold as is, with all faults. The Seller makes no warranty, express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, except as stated in this bill of sale.
5.
Inspection. The Buyer confirms that before this sale they inspected the watch, or reviewed the photographs and description the Seller provided.
6.
Entire agreement. This bill of sale is the complete agreement between the Seller and the Buyer about this sale.

Seller signatureDate

Printed name

Buyer signatureDate

Printed name

Open the paperwork kit

One calculator per question

What are you working out?

Pick the question you actually have. Each calculator uses the same published fee data as the max buy calculator, and each shows its working.

Work a deal backwards before you commit to a number.

See all tools

The library

120 articles on running a watch business

Written for working dealers: what to pay, what to check, where to sell, and what the paperwork has to say. Every figure cites a source.

Compliance, personalized

Not sure what actually applies to your shop?

Answer a few quick questions — how you buy, where you operate, your volume — and get a setup checklist built for your business, federal to city. Drawn from our sourced guides, not guesswork.

Checked against primary sources
Dated, so you know it's current
Points to the official office

Build my compliance plan Browse all guides

Your plan

Phoenix, Arizona

9 steps

Federal

File Form 8300 on large cash deals
Track inventory & cost of goods sold

State

Get a Transaction Privilege Tax license
Register your business entity

City

Apply for a Secondhand Dealer License
Hold reportable items 10 days

Example plan — yours is built from your answers.

Covered today

City and state rules, with the ordinance cited

All 58 guides

More states are being researched and added. Each guide carries the date it was last checked against the source.

Where to sell

What every platform actually charges

Compare platforms

A commission that steps down as your lifetime sales through the platform rise
See the fees
A fully published buyer's premium with no watch carve-out, and a seller's side Christie's does not publish at all
See the fees
Free to list; a commission once the watch sells — but the rate depends on which kind of seller you are
See the fees
Nothing, because there is no platform — the costs are payment rails and risk
See the fees
A final value fee that steps down in bands, plus a small per-order fee
See the fees
10% on shipped orders with checkout; nothing at all on local pickup and group sales
See the fees
Nothing, because Meta no longer sits in the transaction
See the fees
Two transactions, two completely different costs
See the fees
A watch-specific buyer's premium that undercuts Phillips' own general schedule
See the fees
A fully published buyer's premium, and a seller's commission that Sotheby's describes as agreed case-by-case
See the fees
A transaction fee set by seller level, plus payment processing, calculated on the final sale price
See the fees
No commission — the cost is the spread between their offer and what the watch retails for
See the fees

Read from each platform's own published schedule, with the date it was checked. The calculators use the same rates.

Glossary

153 terms, defined plainly

Browse the glossary

Questions

Before you dig in

Is the Watch Trading Toolkit free?

Yes. Every calculator, guide, glossary entry, and article is free to use with no signup. The paperwork kit asks for an email address before it generates a document; nothing else does.

What does the max buy calculator actually work out?

The most you can pay for a watch and still hit your target profit. It starts from the price you expect to sell at, then subtracts selling fees, payment processing, shipping, insurance, prep, and your margin. What's left is your ceiling.

Who publishes this site?

WatchTradingToolkit is published by the team behind WristBook, dealer software for watch businesses. The site is the free layer: the tools and reference material are open to anyone, and the relationship is disclosed anywhere we link to the product.

Are the compliance guides legal advice?

No. They summarize what published rules say, cite the primary source for every figure, and carry the date each was last checked. They're a starting point for a conversation with an attorney or your local licensing office, not a substitute for one.

Do I need a license to buy and sell watches?

It depends on where you operate and who you buy from. Many cities license secondhand dealers and require reporting of purchases from the public, and most states require a sales tax permit. The compliance checker asks a few questions and tells you what applies to your setup.

Where do the fee numbers in the calculators come from?

Each channel preset cites the platform's own published fee page and records the date it was checked. You can override any of them, because your rates may differ from the published ones.

Is my data stored anywhere?

Deals you enter stay in your browser. The calculators and paperwork generators run client-side, so nothing you type about a watch is sent to a server.